Hundreds of workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gathered outside the Vidhan Sabha building in Lucknow on Wednesday morning and launched a massive protest against the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.

Soon, after the launch of the protest, the BJP workers reportedly turned violent and the police in order to control the situation had to fire water cannons and tear gas and also use lathi-charge to disperse the crowd.

Early Wednesday, scores of workers and senior leaders of the centre-ruling party, including MP Anju Bala and Rajya Sabha member Shiv Pratap Shukla, gathered at the BJP Office in Lucknow. At around 10:00am, the workers under the leadership of UP BJP President Keshav Prasad Maurya, went outside the Vidhan Sabha building and started shouting slogans against the state government, which is led by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The protesters were holding flags of BJP and sloganeering against the Samajwadi Party government in UP, while holding the latter responsible for the deteriorating law and order situation in the northern India state.

As the authorities received information about the BJP’s protests, they deployed a massive police force, comprising officials from all over the UP, outside the Vidhan Sabha building. The traffic on one of major route in the state capital which connects Hazaratganj and Charbagh, also came to a standstill due to Wednesday’s protest, whose organizing in-charge was BJP General Secretary Swatantra Deo Singh and was planned a week ago .

Soon, the protests turned violent after a minor scuffle between the police officials and the BJP workers, sources said. To control the situation, the police force deployed in the area started firing water cannons and tear gas at the protesters and later had to lathi-charge to disperse the crowd.

The ruckus outside the Vidhan Sabha building continued till around 1:00pm on the day and many BJP workers sustained injuries during the police lathi-charge. Mediapersons present at the spot were also injured by the stones and objects thrown by the protesters. All the injured were taken to the nearby civil hospital for first aid. Later on the day, UP BJP President Maurya visited the civil hospital to enquire about the well-being of his party workers.

The local shopkeepers in the area and the commuters were the ones who had to bear the maximum loss due to the commotion which continued for hours on Wednesday. Apart from halting the traffic on the route, the authorities also ordered closure of all the shops in the area.